Black Americans backslide under Obama

With President Obama’s gas tank now less than an eighth full, it’s amazing where he has taken black Americans. Mainly, it’s been a long ride in reverse.

Even liberal black broadcaster Tavis Smiley has criticized Obama for this. As Smiley told HuffPost Live’s Alyona Minkovski, “Sadly — and it pains me to say this — over the last decade, black folk, in the era of Obama, have lost ground in every major economic category.”

Smiley is almost completely correct. Based on the Obama administration’s own latest-available statistics by the most basic economic-performance metrics — with one key exception — black Americans are worse off now than when Obama was sworn in on January 20, 2009.